Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin initiated a program in the early 1920s to create a horde of half-man half-ape super soldier with no feeling of pain or fear.

The Soviets drafted their top animal-breeding expert into the program. Ilya Ivanov, who previously had set up the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses, set off for West Africa to conduct his first experiments in inseminating chimpanzees.

Meeting little success, Ivanov turned his efforts around, setting up a facility in Stalin's home republic of Georgia to fertilise human volunteers with monkey and ape sperm. Not surprisingly, the efforts were a total failure.

For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.